Performance Management According to the Ten Commandments

For a quick review of 10-commandments, read my post on Principles & Insights from the Ten Commandments. It also show how I derive the following advices from the original 10 commandments. Applying to Corporate Performance Management, we have the following advices:

1. Find out the What the Most Important Thing is.
• This is usually your company's mission or vision statements. (There are much confusion about mission and vision statements and they are interchanged often. To me, mission is the why and vision is the what of the your future. Mission is your Identity and Vision is a picture of you ID that you are becoming. The clearer you can describe your vision, the more inspiring and directing it can be). 
2. Give it Top Priority - Focus -type 1
   
1. Channel all resources into accomplish it (mission, vision, strategies, objectives, targets)
2. It is not unusual to find that you may be trying to achieve multiple targets that are in conflict with each others. That is because you have not done step 1 yet. You have not figure out what is more important than the others.
3. Saying No to Others - Focus Type-2
1. You may think that you do not have the resources to achieve to accomplish it. The answer lies in identifying those resources committed to achieving other targets that are not related or are in conflict with your top priority objectives. They are actually waste, no matter what you call them.
   
2. Cut the waste, channel the resources back to the top priority objectives. (I use objectives, the plural form, is because the top most objective have to be cascaded into sub-objectives).
3. Be on the alert. There are always temptations to detract you from achieving the top priority objectives, including some seemingly good and hard to reject offers, such as customers' potential or real orders.
4. For more on focus see Focus - The Key to Productivity and Excellence
4. Build your Brand
1. What is your unique customer value proposition? The one in your mission statement. Work this out with some details, the  key 1 to at most 5 key unique experiential offer and carefully deliver such promised experience. 
2. Monitor for, in the social media as well, what your customers are saying. Correct any bad experience. Reinforce the good one.
5. Communicate and Build Engaged Relationship
1. The key stakeholders are customers, staff, partners, public and owners in decreasing order of priority.
2. There are shift in the management thinking from customers to staff. Treat staff well to engage customers. Not that customers are not important, but staff is the channel through which the customers is served. Do all well.
3. Keep in touch with all stakeholders. Have regular meetings with them beside the convenient social media for daily and constant contact. Accept ideas, explain ideas, involve them in product development, marketing, and also customer service. Let and empower users help other users.
6. Respect all especially those who are our Senior or the Power Influence-rs.
• Not all stakeholders are of equal important. Identify the leaders among them. Work closer with this group. Those who bash us well are good leaders to talk to too.  They are the ones that were concerned with your bad performance. Win them over.
7. Harmony and Compassion.
1. Business is not just a war, see my posts Business as War is Half the Truth,
2. Think of how to work with competitors to enlarge the pie and not fight over a shrinking pie.
8. Loyalty and Faithfulness.
1. In the world of rapid changes, such values are even rare and are highly valued.
2. Help customers to upgrade.
3. Help staff to develop and move them to new areas instead of letting the area obsoleted and then retire them.
4. Loyalty and faithfulness are strong motivators to help you do better, staff and customers alike. It is not just about caring, but setting good standards and delivery high quality experience. Some discipline may be needful.
   
9. Defending, Protecting Reputation and Your Brand
1. There are people out there to try to destroy your brand reputation. It is very sad that the social media is being exploited to be an effective media for the nasty people to plant false stories and create rumors to ruin your brand.
2. Be quick and wise in your defense against such attack. Always take things with a positive pro-action than a vengeful reaction. Be frank and truthful if the mistake is truly ours. Don't try to spin it off.
10. Defending and Protection of Assets.
1. Today assets include the soft intangible intellectual properties besides the tangible physical assets.
2. In the past, we are concern about assets being destroyed. Now we have to add one  more layer of protection - leak.
   
3. IP type assets could be easily leaked to others, even by insiders. Check your DLP (Data Loss/Leak Protection) and monitor them well. 
4. Wikileaks is a good lesson for all to learn and raise our concerns on DLP.

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